Tabula Rasa(9)

“The Twentieth Legion do not go around!” repeated the others, rolling this new outrage about on their tongues as if they were enjoying the flavor.

“So I said to her,” continued the woman with the lisp, “you want to do what my cousin did when they kept letting his sheep out.”

Tilla took a sip of beer and waited, an invisible member of the audience. The woman was local: She remembered the thick brows and the eager front teeth. “He moved the sheep up to the common,” the woman said, “and he put the bull in there instead.”

Her audience seemed to like that.

“I was there when the next lot came. You should have seen them run! Tripping over each other and everything falling out of their packs.”

There was general laughter, and Tilla could not resist a smile.

“See? The Twentieth Legion do go around after all.”

The talk drifted to people she did not know. Across the road, a cat was picking its way delicately along the roof of the leatherworker’s shop, untroubled by the puddle that covered half the street below.

Had she done the right thing about Cata? The mother had plainly been hoping she would use her influence with the Medicus to have the man disciplined. That was the problem with being honest about having married an officer: People wanted her to pass messages to the Legion. But at least this way she could not be accused of betraying anybody. Everyone knew from the start not to tell her things that the Romans were not supposed to know. And if there were times when that made her lonely, well, that was how life was. One of her mother’s favorite sayings was Nobody likes a girl who feels sorry for herself. Which was very annoying but true.

Virana passed by her with a tray of drinks and then returned to the back room. Outside, the woman with the lisp said, “You know about that one, do you?”

Tilla held her breath. They had been offered a room here after Virana had given a sob story about her baby’s father being dead. “Well, he might be,” Virana had insisted when Tilla challenged her about it later. On the other hand, there were plenty of candidates for fatherhood still very much alive and serving with the Twentieth Legion, and Tilla had known she could not keep it quiet for long.

“They all live together over the bar here, you know.”

“No! Really? I thought he lived in the fort.”

Tilla frowned into her beer and wondered if she should walk away. Or perhaps stand up and let herself be seen. She did neither, despite another of her mother’s favorites: No good comes of listening to gossip.

Someone asked a question she could not catch. “Enica says the wife is barren,” said the woman with the lisp. “But she says he’s had more luck with the slave, as you see.”

Tilla struggled to stifle her spluttering as the beer went the wrong way. Enica was a member of the family she would be introducing to her husband tonight—if he managed to turn up. She had explained when they first met that Virana’s child was nothing to do with her husband, who was not a maid chaser. And Virana had said so too, and Enica had said . . . It did not matter what Enica had said, because it was clear now that she had not believed either of them.

Somebody said, “I heard they picked that one up in Eboracum and she isn’t really a slave at all.”

“Hmph. I’m surprised the wife puts up with it.”

“The wife’s probably grateful to be taken in,” said another voice. “I heard he rescued her from the Northerners.”

“That is just what she says,” said someone else. “Did you not know? He bought her. She was in a brothel down in Deva.”

“That can’t be right. Isn’t she a Roman citizen?”

Tilla wanted to shout, I was only lodging in the brothel! Why didn’t you just ask me? Instead she took a large gulp of beer.

Somebody said, “And the old boy’s really invited them?”

“That’s what Enica said. Because she looks like her mother. You can imagine what Enica thinks about that. Conn too.”

“Ah, but Conn is a miserable offering these days, don’t you think? Not a bit like his father. Or his brother, may he walk in peace.”

“They all end up that way, girl. Look at mine.”

“What? Dead?”

“No, he just looks it. Bad-tempered.”

“Mine too,” chimed in another voice. “Never happy unless he’s complaining.”

“Still, it’s a bad sign if he’s like that already at his age. You want something better at the start, no?”

And they were off into discussing the reasons why the son of the man whose hearth she would be sharing tonight had slumped from being a fine young man to a miserable offering.